Mental Wellbeing

WELL CARE aims to strengthen the supports available to informal carers and long-term care (LTC) workers for improving their resilience and mental wellbeing through care partnerships. The project consortium, lead by prof. Elizabeth Hanson (Linnaeus University) and consisting of six research organizations and nine national and European advocacy organizations, identifies good practices able to prevent or mitigate both occupational and non-occupational risks for informal carers' and LTC workers' resilience and mental wellbeing. On this basis, and under its Grant Agreement with the European Commission, the project team develops innovative solution prototypes, which will be transferable across different countries and contexts and guide stakeholders into the actual implementation in 5 European Union (EU) countries (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden), where the LTC sector presents dissimilar characteristics. Finally, the investigators will exploit the data and evidence collected and generated by WELL CARE to analyze related EU and national policies, and to formulate action-oriented recommendations for policy makers and stakeholders. The current study protocol concerns the research activities within Work Package 3 of the project, particularly the activities during the Implementation and Evaluation Phase that runs from September 2026 until the end of 2027. During this phase the project team studies the results of local implementation partners' efforts who - building on the solution prototypes developed earlier in the WELL CARE project - develop and implement new supportive work and care practices. The investigators study the effects that implementing these practices brings about among participating caregivers in terms of mental wellbeing, resilience and care partnership dynamics, while also studying the implementation process itself to capture the processes, conditions and (organizational) contexts favorable to fostering care partnerships.

This multicenter observational prospective study aims to explore the impact of peri-operative support measures (mentorship or coaching or intraoperative consultation) on the mental well-being of early career surgeons. Furthermore sub-analyses will be conducted to explore the impact that surgeons mental wellbeing related to different support measures could have on patients' outcomes

This is a phase 1, open-label study to assess changes in mental well-being following MDMA administration within a therapeutic setting, in mental health providers who are in training to become MDMA assisted therapists. Secondary outcome measures will examine the effects on provider burnout, provider self-efficacy, mood, self-compassion, quality of life, and other psychological factors. Participants will work with a co-therapy pair as they engage in a preparatory session, one experimental session with MDMA, and an integration session the following day.

The mental hygiene challenge is a Royal Ottawa Health Care Group led initiative to engage the staff, clients and community members to attend to their mental well-being by way of practicing mental hygiene activities for 10 min on a daily basis, throughout the month of March. Participants are encouraged to choose one or many of the practices recommended and do them for about 10 minutes a day. Participants are encouraged to make it their own, in that they can combine the practice or tailor them in a way that suits them best. When signing up for the challenge, participants receive free access to a toolkit with brief outlines and instructional videos on various mental hygiene practices. Study investigators also encourage participants to divide the 10 minutes in whatever way best works for them, such as 10 minutes all at once, 5 minutes twice, or even 2 minutes five times. This study aims to expand on the work that was done in 2022 and 2023, when the World Health Organization - 5 Wellbeing Index (WHO-5) and the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) were collected from participants to ascertain the impact of mental hygiene, by way of including a control group.

The current study uses a randomized cross-over design, in which participants are exposed to brief mindfulness-based experiential sessions with and without incorporating virtual reality (i.e., the experimental and control conditions, respectively). Order of exposure to these two conditions are counter-balanced and participants are randomized into the two arms of exposure in a different order. Furthermore, this study includes the use of both subjective self-report and objective physiological measures of mental wellbeing. It is hypothesized that VR-incorporated mindfulness-based experiential session brings a greater improvement in state mindfulness, state affect, and stress response. Results shed light on the added value of incorporating VR into brief MBIs, particularly in reference to the typical practice of promoting mindfulness in the local community.

Psychological issues are common among university students and affect mental wellbeing. The Caring Universities (CU) project, involving nine Dutch universities, aims to enhance students' mental health through an annual online questionnaire and a platform offering guided eHealth interventions. One intervention, LifeHack, utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy-based modules to improve mental wellbeing by enhancing resilience and life skills. The effects of LifeHack with pre-post measurements (total n = 216 at post-test) found found that LifeHack led to improvements in mental wellbeing, but dropout rates were influenced by lack of motivation and module relevance. A personalized version of LifeHack is being developed to address these issues and will be evaluated in an RCT to assess its effectiveness in improving mental wellbeing and related outcomes among university students.